Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at the moment in 1609, when Jesuit missionaries presented Emperor Jahangir with a book of Advice on Kingship in Persian. The book's imagined geographies shed light on a period of intensifying collaboration, even as hopes for conversion faded.

Paper long abstract:

In 1609, three decades after their arrival at the Mughal court, Jesuit missionaries presented emperor Jahangir with a book of Advice on Kingship in Persian (Adab al-Saltanat). Written by the head of the mission, Jerome Xavier, the book followed a period of intensifying Mughal-Jesuit artistic and literary collaborations, even as Jesuit hopes for conversion faded. Produced by a mission struggling for relevancy at an Indo-Islamic court, and for an emperor in search of ever new ways to symbolically assert his pretensions of universal rule over territories far beyond the 'borders' of the empire, the text's imagined geographies shed new light on our understanding of this cross-cultural encounter.